I extend a sincere thanks to the people at the MIT Press for their patience and diligence in ushering this book to completion. In particular, I wish to thank Katie Helke, Justin Kehoe, and Matthew Abbate.
While my first academic presentation on the broad subject of infrastructure dates back to 2002, it was not until several years later that my own thinking on the subject caught up with the excellent work of many others in what is now the field of infrastructure studies. I was also deeply influenced by moving from Ontario to Alberta for a new job in 2010, a move that situated my research in geographical proximity to the Canadian oil industry. I’m not sure if this proximity provides my scholarship with an unwarranted sense of pessimism or an accidental shade of realism, but it did put me in touch with the wonderful scholars of the Petrocultures Research Cluster from the University of Alberta. This book benefits from conference presentations and discussions with many of the scholars aggregated under the Petrocultures label. In particular, I wish to thank the following for generative encounters over the years: Imre Szeman, Sheena Wilson, Mark Simpson, Graeme Macdonald, Stephanie LeMenager, Darin Barney, Dominic Boyer, Jordan B. Kinder, and Adam Carlson. I wish to extend a special thanks to Graeme Macdonald, Stephanie LeMenager, and Allan Stoekl for sitting for interviews that later appeared in a film I made called “Petroculture: A Short Film” (on YouTube at https://youtu.be/iAU_I1TSFpk). Dolly Jørgensen kindly accepted my proposal to participate in the “Aesthetics of the Energy Landscape” workshop in May 2016 in Luleå, Sweden. This was a fantastic workshop in a beautiful part of Sweden that introduced me to a number of students and professors who were working at the intersection of infrastructure and aesthetics, which was inspiring for me after working on the book in solitude for many months. Thank you, Dolly! Some of the material on the “suicidal state” I prepared for an invited keynote at the University of Victoria for the 2016 “Nihilism.Hope Conference” put on by graduate students in Cultural, Social and Political Thought; thank you to the organizers, Galina Scolnic, Russell Elliott, and Tim Charlebois, and a special thanks to David Miller. Jan Jagodzinski and Jessie Beier invited me to the University of Alberta to talk about environmentalist documentaries, part of a series of talks that became Interrogating the Anthropocene, and I am very appreciative to have participated in such a project. In a similar sense, I wish to thank Pauline Destree and Hannah Knox for organizing “The Art of Infrastructure” panels at the Art, Materiality and Representation conference at the British Museum in 2018; it was edifying to encounter scholars who share my passion for art and infrastructure.
I must thank my dissertation adviser, Randy Harris, who was integral to shaping my future as a scholar. Thank you, Mount Royal University, for providing a sabbatical during which much of this book was written. The students of English 4401 studied some of the texts analyzed in this book and were game participants in an early survey of the material I was developing.
Kyle Kinaschuk and Isis Sadek provided essential assistance in the preparation of this book; I extend a particular thanks to Isis, whose continuing support for and interest in the project are appreciated immensely.
Solidarity with comrades, some of whom I have never met in person, who have taught me so much over the years: Ajamu Nangwaya, Praba Pilar, Alex Wilson, Ben Brucato, Kali Akuno, Thandisizwe Chimurenga, Ellie Adekur Carlson, Jordy Cummings, Lesley Wood, Alex Khasnabish, Nathan Jun, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Kimalee Phillip, Erin Araujo, David Gomez Vazquez (RIP), Wangui Kimari, Gussai H. Sheikheldin, Anna Selmeczi, Aragorn Eloff, Affiong Limene Affiong, Richard Day, Simon Springer, and Uri Gordon. I may not share a comprehensive ideology with every person on that list, but they have all taught me in vital, if partial, ways.
Rob Glover, Karl Wierzbicki, and Jason Nelson had conversations with me about the material in this book that shaped my perspective on art and infrastructure.
Thank you, Damien “Doomed Society” Inbred, for producing the best punk podcast around.
Of course, all of the mistakes and bad judgment exhibited by me in this book are entirely my fault. This book should be read in the manner in which most of it was written: listening to Neurosis and Appalachian Terror Unit.
To my family: I owe you everything. Thank you for a lifetime of love and support.
And good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.
Portions of this book have appeared in other publications:
Michael Truscello, “Can the Petro-modern State Form ‘Wither Away’? The Implications of Hyperobjects for Anti-Statist Politics,” in Petrocultures: Oil, Culture, Politics, ed. Sheena Wilson, Adam Carlson, and Imre Szeman (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), 120–131.
Michael Truscello, “Catastrophism and Its Critics: On the New Genre of Environmentalist Documentary Film,” in Interrogating the Anthropocene: Ecology, Aesthetics, Pedagogy, and the Future in Question, ed. jan jagodzinski (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 257–276.
Michael Truscello, “The New Topographics, Dark Ecology, and the Energy Infrastructure of Nations: Considering Agency in the Photographs of Edward Burtynsky and Mitch Epstein from a Post-Anarchist Perspective,” Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies 3, no. 2 (2012), https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/imaginations/index.php/imaginations/article/view/27253.
Michael Truscello and Uri Gordon, “Whose Streets? Anarchism, Technology, and the Petromodern State,” Anarchist Studies 21, no. 1 (2013), 9–27.